'Battle of the Cheetos': Social Game To Determine 'Crunchy' or 'Puffy' Dominance via Genwow
Usually choosing variants of snack foods is a personal thing, from plain to ruffled and everywhere in between.
But Cheetos wants to change all that, with Battle of the Cheetos, a social game from Goodby and North Kingdom designed to enable you to choose your favorite battle fields - Mashable, Gawker, BoingBoing.net, you name it - and the call out your friends and others for battles that can be tracked and saved via Facebook. You can even taunt your opponent by activating your PC's microphone.
This is a great video from Jake McKee (formally LEGO’s Global Community Relations Specialist) discussing how LEGO found, supported and incubated their biggest fans from around the world to help pull the company out of a pretty dark time to be back on top of the world, lead in part, by a strong social media strategy.
A word of warning, this is a 30 minute video, from a conference late last year (so skip the first 30 secs) and is not exactly their strategy, but more a case study of success, however, it’s well worth the time, and probably something you won’t have time to watch at your desk today so just make sure you remember to watch it later!
Jake McKee makes three really strong, but incredibly simple (how often do we see simplicity works socially?!) points.
1. Look beyond your target customers 2. Support existing fans 3. Find what works and replicate
1. Look beyond your target customers Your target market isn’t always your biggest group of talkers. For years, LEGO was focused on kids — that is, until they realized adults had created their own community of enthusiasts. When LEGO started connecting these talkers, not only did they increase their word of mouth, they immediately helped their bottom line. Whereas kids were spending $20 a year on LEGOs, these adults were spending around $1,000.
2. Support existing fans Without LEGO’s knowledge, adult fans had already created an online LEGO community and marketplace. LEGO approached this group by offering support and resources in the form of an ambassador program. By offering to support what these fans were already doing so well -instead of demanding ownership and control -LEGO was welcomed into the community.
3. Find what works and replicate The enthusiasm of the adult fans helped teach LEGO how to gain more participation from their other fans- including kids. Jake says that when you find something that works with one fan group, try applying it to other groups of talkers. Because the fundamentals of great communities are the same, strategies behind one fan community can often generate similar success for another community. (via Igor on Viral Blog)
OK, it's often the business, rather than the sexy end of digital, but it's where the ROI rubber hits the pixel road... and these guys are being recognised as getting it pretty right. Worth checking some of these out
Thanks Alf, courtesy of http://www.onlineretailer.net/
1. Best Pure-Play Online Retailer
This category is open to new and established pure-play online retailers without a physical store, who demonstrate best practice in merchandising, service, functionality and customer experience. Judging will be based not on overall size but on efficiency, ingenuity, dedication to customer experience and return on investment.
Multichannel is open to retailers demonstrating best practice in integrating traditional retail with online retail in an innovative, effective way to grow the overall retail business. Judging will be based not on overall size but on efficiency, ingenuity, dedication to customer experience and return on investment.
This award is for the best new start-up (launched post Jan 1, 2009), be it pure-play or multichannel, who demonstrates a sound, innovative and effective business strategy and a growing customer base.
For the online retailer who best utilises available technologies or proprietary systems that deliver improved efficiencies for the business, better customer experiences and valuable analytical data to continually improve.
We're looking for the most imaginative initiatives in the online retail space, whether that be in site design, usability, customer experience, service, fulfillment or any other area of the retail discipline. What we're looking for is something original, exciting and practical. Must be able to prove demonstrably how innovation has led to tangible, positive results.
An award for the best online retail marketing initiative, via a single channel or an integrated campaign, such as email, mobile, social media, search, offline, live events or a combination of many. Must be able to show a link between the marketing initiative and increased traffic and sales.
Site usability, product and content, efficiency of delivery, customer service and marketing are among the factors that will be taken into consideration when judging the customer experience award, with contenders requiring high scores in all areas.
This is for the fast-thinking, entrepreneurial innovator (either individual or company) whose new ideas, approaches and strategies have had an impact on the industry in the last 12 months and will help influence the future of online retailing.
OK it's not digi-wow, but i just love the simple smartness in this work. Thanks Fred via CrookedBrains:
Creative and clever DHL's advertising campaigns from all over the world.
DHL - Turning Page: Clever and innovative use of magazine; a transparent plastic sheet was placed into the magazine with DHL worker printed on both sides. And when you turn the paper the worker delivers the express mail to the customer.
DHL Online Tracking: To create awareness for DHL online tracking among the business community, a group of couriers with a white silhouette of a computer cursor on their backs were posted around the central business district. As they walked around, it literally demonstrated the possibility of constant tracking of DHL parcels. 'Courier 24 Hours Online Tracking.'
DHL Express - Pit lane: The back of a DHL cargo center in Amsterdam was converted into the biggest billboard in Europe. This huge poster measures 196 meters long and almost 4 meters high. As DHL is the official logistic partner of F1, they made a detailed replica of F1 pit lane. DHL vehicles would drive by day in day out to reach the main entrance of the building. And this would be seen by train travelers from Amsterdam to Zaandam.
DHL Installations: 'If it is where it belongs it was probably delivered by DHL.'
DHL Van: To create awareness for DHL online tracking among the business community, a large white silhouette of a computer cursor was installed on the fleet of DHL's runner vans which shuttles around the central business district. As a result there was an apparent drop in parcel enquiry recorded by the DHL phone tracking system while it effectively increased the usage of online tracking among the customers.
DHL - Tunnel box: To draw attention for the superfast DHL Express service from Asia, DHL provided boxes with a special inlay. The inlay, at the bottom of the box, shows another open box and together they make a long 'tunnel'. In one version the person hands over a toy box, in other version its laptop and shoe.
DHL - Maze: A huge three-dimensional billboard measuring 7 x 5 meters was installed directly in front of Schiphol Airport's main entrance, a small ball rolls from point A to B via the shortest route. At the end of its journey, the ball is transported by an invisible conveyor belt within the billboard back to the top to repeat the process, along the same route, again and again. This was done to get the attention of business travelers at Schiphol Airport, where 11 million people pass through each year.
Advertising as a service... in the extreme. Thanks Ads of the World
Driving a convertible in Halle (Salle) – at first glance this doesn’t appear particularly spectacular, but in reality it’s a small miracle. For Halle is statistically the rain capital of Europe, with 266 rainy days per year (2004). Sixt and advertising agency Jung von Matt/Elbe were evidently unwilling to accept this cold, wet situation, so they enlisted the help of former NVA fighter pilot Sandro Wolf who used the chemical silver iodide to “blow Halle’s clouds away”. This extraordinary feat can be witnessed in the film “Sun in Halle”, which is currently being exclusively screened at sixt.de. The film reveals the secrets of the pin-prick tactic, which Sandro Wolf uses to successfully combat rain and storm clouds. It also shows disturbingly beautiful images of a completely cloud-free Halle, as well as the city’s proud inhabitants enjoying the sun – in an affordable convertible from Sixt, of course.
The Google Wave invite rollout extravaganza started more than a month ago. While in some respects the buzz around Google Wave has started to subside, the term is still constantly one of the top trending topics on Twitter, and new gadgets, extensions, and applications are now starting to appear on a daily basis.
Each day more and more people are opening up their email inbox to find an invite to Google Wave (). With that shiny new invite comes the inevitable quest for ideas about to how to put the medium to good use.
Should you happen to be one of those people, we’ve got a number of different resources that you can use to get up to speed with Google Wave. This time around, however, we wanted to look at how people are actually using it now. From process modelling and customer service, to project collaboration, annotation, and gaming, the examples listed here highlight the power of the newborn medium, and in part, showcase what we can expect as the platform matures.
1. SAP Gravity: Modeling within Google Wave
Understanding the power of real-time collaboration and its relevance to clients, SAP Research in Australia () has developed a business process modeling tool called Gravity that works within Google Wave.
The sophisticated tool, which can be embedded within a Wave as a gadget, allows for team members to remotely build complex models in unison, or after catching up via playback, without having to leave Google Wave.
Gravity and Google Wave work together harmoniously to create a modeling environment that appears to be just as robust as, if not more flexible than, expensive desktop software built for the same purpose.
We think SAP is certainly on to something here, and we encourage you to watch the video demonstration of Gravity in Google Wave in action.
2. Salesforce: Google Wave for Customer Service
Salesforce, like SAP, has figured out that they can use the Google Wave platform to support client needs and tackle real-life problems. As such, Salesforce has created a Google Wave extension that clients can use to help automate, and even personalize, the customer service experience.
Watch the demonstration video to see how the Salesforce extension gives customers the ability to use Google Wave to interact with an automated support robot. Of course, customers can request assistance from a human within the Wave as well.
What makes this example stand out is the fact that not only is the Google Wave dialogue being stored as a case record within Salesforce, but, because the robot is connected to the Salesforce Service Cloud, the robot can access previously stored customer data for tailored service. Ultimately, Salesforce has found a way to potentially save clients money on customer service efforts, all the while maintaining active records, with the assistance of Google Wave.
3. Mingle: Integrated Project Collaboration
Mingle is a project management and team collaboration tool developed by ThoughtWorks Studios, who realized that they could add Mingle’s project management metadata to conversations in Google Wave.
The integration is still a work in progress, but a demonstration of the concept was highlighted at Enterprise 2.0, and the basic idea is to give Google Wave users/Mingle clients the ability to bring their Mingle task data, which takes the form of cards, into Google Wave. Existing Mingle cards can be embedded into Wave conversation threads, and new Mingle cards/tasks can be created within Google Wave.
This particular use case highlights how Google Wave can work with existing project management systems for more streamlined and cohesive communication, creating parity regardless of where the user is accessing project data.
4. Ecomm Conference: Annotating a Live Event
Just last week our CEO, Pete Cashmore, wrote about how the savvy people behind the Ecomm conference doled out Wave accounts to attendees so that they could collaborate, in real-time, to annotate presentation content. The result was arguably a much better way to consume conference content than attempting to follow hashtag tweets on Twitter ().
You can read the full account, which was documented by Charlie Osmond, on the FreshNetworks blog, but here’s an excerpt that we think drives home the utility of the use case.
“Here’s what happened: an audience member would create a Google Wave and others in the audience would edit the wave during the presentation. The result would be a crowd-sourced write-up of the presentation: a transcript of key points and a record of audience comments.”
We happen to think this particular use case is genius, especially for content-rich seminars and events where attendees are typically taking their own individual notes. With the shared Google Wave experience they can combine forces to create a more meaningful and accurate recounting of information shared in conference sessions.
5. Gamers: Google Wave RPGs
A very detailed Ars Technica post highlights that there’s a growing collection of Google Wave users who are using the medium to play wave-borne RPGs (role playing games). As mentioned in the post, there’s a even a Wave dedicated to serving as an index for all the Wave RPGs currently in existence, and the last time we counted it included upwards of 300 contributing members, and a combination of 30 different ideas or full-fledged games.
According to Jon Stokes, the author of the post, Google Wave is adequate for some RPGs, but it could certainly be improved to allow for a more enjoyable experience. In the excerpt below, Stokes describes the current RPG () experience within Google Wave:
“The few games I’m following typically have at least three waves: one for recruiting and general discussion, another for out-of-character interactions (”table talk”), and the main wave where the actual in-character gaming takes place. Individual players are also encouraged to start waves between themselves for any conversations that the GM shouldn’t be privy to. Character sheets can be posted in a private wave between a player and the GM, and character biographies can go anywhere where the other players can get access to them.
The waves are persistent, accessible to anyone who’s added to them, and include the ability to track changes, so they ultimately work quite well as a medium for the non-tactical parts of an RPG. A newcomer can jump right in and get up-to-speed on past interactions, and a GM or industrious player can constantly maintain the official record of play by going back and fixing errors, formatting text, adding and deleting material, and reorganizing posts. Character generation seems to work quite well in Wave, since players can develop the shared character sheet at their own pace with periodic feedback from the GM.”
What big brands do the best job with social media? A new study by analyst Charlene Li of the Altimeter Group and Wetpaint ranks the top 100 brands by social media engagement. You can find the report embedded below or on ENGAGEMENTdb, which was presumably created with Wetpaint’s site-creation software.
The study scores the engagement level of each of the top 100 brands across more than ten social media channels, including blogs, Facebook, Twitter, wikis, and discussion forums. Starbucks scored the highest, with 127 points. The top ten brands are:
1. Starbucks (127) 2. Dell (123) 3. eBay (115) 4. Google (105) 5. Microsoft (103) 6. Thomson Reuters (101) 7. Nike (100) 8. Amazon (88) 9. SAP (86) 10. Tie – Yahoo!/Intel (85)
The report categorizes brands into one of four types, depending on how many social media channels they participate in. The most engaged are “mavens,” while the least engaged are “wallflowers” (McDonalds and BP are examples). The study claims a correlation between social media engagement and revenue growth. The “mavens” saw revenues grow an average of 18 percent over the past 12 months, while the Wallflowers saw revenues drop 6 percent. I really doubt that their level of social media engagement had anything to do with their revenue growth, it is just that the strongest brands are the most engaged.
Make it believable. Many marketing groups would never make a claim if they can't provide substantial evidence. How might Tourism Queensland prove that their job is the best in the world? They can't. But it is believable because it is a beautiful place and fits what many people's definition of a dream job might be.
It's not about how much you spend. One of the major benefits of smart public relations and social media is that it scales in a way that advertising typically doesn't. In other words, you don't have to pay more to get more. The real trick is to have something worthwhile to say that people can't help talking about. You need a good story.
Focus on content, not traffic. The typical marketing campaign focuses on traffic to some kind of site. For Tourism Queensland, the biggest payoff of this campaign was having over 34,000 videos on YouTube from people around the world talking about how much they love Queensland. Aggregate the views of all those videos, and multiply them over the long term and you'll start to understand the true impact of their campaign.
Create an inherent reason for people to share. Another element of this campaign that worked extremely well was the fact that there was voting enabled on the videos. What this meant was that after someone submitted their video, they had an incentive to share it with everyone in their social network online to try and get more votes.
Don't underestimate the power of content creators Most recent statistics point to some number between 1% and 10% of the user base of any social network are the active content creators. Though these percentages may seem small, the potential impact of some of these individuals are vast online. It could easily become the secret weapon for your next marketing campaign.
Give your promotion a shelf life. The best thing about this campaign may just be the content yet to come. Ben, the winner, just started blogging and sharing videos and photos, but the content is already engaging, high quality and inspires you to dream of making it to Queensland yourself. Over the next six months, his itinerary will take him across the state of Queensland and unlock many other unique opportunities. Best of all, this content will live on far beyond the time span of the campaign.
SEATTLE: Starbucks, the coffee house chain, and Unilever, the consumer goods giant, have teamed up to promote their jointly-produced ice cream brand on Facebook, using an application that encourages consumers to download coupons via the social network.
It has been argued that the current financial crisis has forced Starbucks to reassess its priorities after years of growth, and the company has also come under increasing pressure from rivals such as McDonald's.
By way of a response, it has not only sought to move into the retail space, but also to utilise social media like Facebook and Twitter to connect with consumers.
Unilever signed a licensing agreement to produce an ice cream range based on some of Starbuck's most popular coffee flavours, such as Caramel Macciato, Mocha Frappuccino and Java Chip Frappuccino, last year.
Simon Clift, the FMCG giant's chief marketing officer, has also previously championed the use of social media as a means of engaging a broad audience.
Running for two weeks, the two firms' current Facebook campaign will see 20,000 pints of Starbucks ice cream being given away each day.
Some 280,000 pints will be available overall, with members of the social network being required to download a voucher which they can then send on to a person of their choice.
According to a statement from the companies, "participants can treat others or – if the temptation is too great – indulge themselves by claiming one of just over 800 coupons available at the top of each hour."
Other brands that have recently been active on Facebook include Volkswagen and General Motors, which have used "widgets" – applications that feature on "profile pages" – produced by RockYou.
Gap has similarly employed some of the company's products, which vary from games and quizzes to video and tools that allow users to "decorate" their personal profile.
Microsoft and Experian are also among the major advertisers that are now using Facebook's own "engagement ads", which appear on user pages and contain interactive features.
Marc Andreessen, a board member of the social networking pioneer, has predicted that the company will make "over $500 million (€357m; £309m)" in revenue this year.
Furthermore, he added that "if they pushed the throttle forward on monetization they would be doing more than a billion this year."
"There's every reason to expect in my view that the thing can be doing billions in revenue five years from now," Andreessen concluded.
Data sourced from BrandWeek/Forbes/Reuters; additional content by WARC staff, 08 July 2009
OK... i've been totally slack and not posted a damn thing for ages, apart from those annoying delicious links which are mostly of use to me, but anyway, trying to get back on track now.
Starting with a nice little, practical summary of AR that our Interactive CD, Fred Hass wrote:
Technologies
There are two main ways to achieve Augmented Reality in a browser.
1: Total Immersion:This French company has been the leader in the Augmented Reality field for commercial use. If you are after the best quality 3D this is the one to go with. Pros: Higher quality 3D Cons: Costly licence fee, no community, single vendor, custom code language, large file size, new plugin required Links: Official Site
2: Flash: Can be integrated into any flash site and works with Flash 8+ Pros: No plugin, small file size, open source, community, flash is a common skill Cons: Lower quality 3D Links: FLART
There is also various other technologies which could be used but all have limited web capabilities.
Many universities have Augmented Reality research labs and I think we'll start to see this technology get more mature over the next few years as commercial applications for it start to materialize.
EXAMPLES
Living Sasquatch - Papervision - Augmented Reality http://vimeo.com/4233057?pg=embed&sec=
Mini Augmented Reality http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HTYeuo6pIjY&feature=player_embedded
Doritos Sweet Chili http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tJ_4tYUIQ8Y
I got most of the examples and more info from the following sites/articles. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augmented_reality http://www.notcot.org/tag/augmented%20reality/ Yotube Search http://replicatorinc.com/blog/2009/04/augmented-reality-going-mainstream/ http://blog.zeusdidit.com/web-design/augmented-reality-campaign http://www.nickburcher.com/2009/05/augmented-reality-5-more-examples-of.html http://adverlab.blogspot.com/2009/05/augmented-reality-microsites-first.html http://www.adverblog.com/archives/003689.htm http://www.basderks.nl/blog/?p=118 http://www.regalatucorazon.cl/ http://www.squidder.com/
There are also two blogs dedicated to AR which have even more examples
The intersection of social media and longstanding brands is a fascinating phenomenon to study. How does a company that has been around for decades react to the fast-paced world of social media? Do they shun it or embrace it? Do they stumble or do they create a deeper connect with their customers?
This week, Sears Holdings officially launched two social networks for their customers, MySearsMyKmart. Although these social communities do have a few quirks, the initiative that they represent, coupled with their well-designed social elements, is a sign of how more traditional companies are embracing social media technology to create a better customer experience and a better brand. and
A little on MySears and MyKmart…
So what exactly are MySears and MyKmart? At their core, they are social networks for reviews. Products being sold by Sears are up for review by any community member, on a 1 to 5 star scale, with generally short one line descriptions or criticisms.
MySears and MyKmart also incorporate several other useful social elements. They have their own message boards and active blogs. My favorite feature, though, is the Ideas section. This is an area for submitting product ideas to Kmart and Sears, with an up-or-down voting system similar to Reddit (). It’s a great way for Sears to solicit new ideas and to start a discussion around them. They could also submit their own ideas and get some feedback from loyal customers.
Despite some great features, the two social networks do have a few quirks that raise questions. MySears and MyKmart are linked to social media accounts on Twitter (), Facebook (), and MySpace (), but the Twitter links direct you to completely idle Kmart and Sears accounts, a no-no that projects laziness. It’s even stranger when you account for the fact that there’s an active account for MySears.
One other strange issue: some reviews date as far back as 2006. MySears and MyKmart had their soft launches in 2008, so we wonder from where they are pulling these much older reviews. Yet despite these small issues, the overall implementation is great. That’s probably because Sears partnered with Viewpoints, a seasoned social media company with an emphasis on reviews, to build these community websites.
Traditional brands and social media
What Sears is doing is a more common phenomenon than people may think. Major brands like Ford and Comcast are using Twitter extensively, while other brands like Saturn have their own social networks for their customers.
While many older companies have yet to embrace social media technology, others like Sears grasp the advantages presented by new forms of communication. Building community creates more loyal and caring customers. Twitter and Facebook facilitate a wider discussion and can help prevent PR nightmares. And the shareability of social media helps foster the exchange of ideas between brands and consumers.
Sears now has two great platforms for collecting ideas from passionate shoppers with the Ideas section of MySears and MyKmart. These networks provide customers with useful product reviews. And finally, Sears now has people who will not only evangelize their brand, but keep them honest as well. This is how many older and more traditional companies are embracing social media, and we think it’s empowering the customer and improving the quality of major brands.
We are obsessed with the next new thing. As an industry we eagerly anticipate new software releases, tirelessly champion new services (MySpace to Facebook to Twitter) and new eras (Web 3.0 anyone?). We also have no fear of eating our young -- how many times have you heard the phrase "Google-killer"?
For digital marketers the eagerness to find the next new thing is both a blessing and a curse. Steve Rubel, Edelman's digital czar, summed up the paradox best recently when he said, "Second Life was digital marketing's Vietnam." There is a price to be paid for being too quick to embrace a new, untested technology after all. You can both overshoot the market and look foolish at the same time.
Augmented reality, also known as AR, sits at that precarious nexus today. It could transform the digital landscape, merging online and offline in wild new creative ways, as Hashem Bajwa points out in an earlier DigitalNext post. Or it could forever be the stuff of freaks and geeks. Will the hype around augmented reality crush the technology before it can really take off?
First, a bit of background: today augmented reality enables consumers to physically manipulate 3-D objects as displayed on a monitor. The technology is based on using markers that are basically printed patterns on paper that when viewed through a video stream and recognized by software create a type of hologram-effect.
Think Star Wars' Princess Leia's hologram communication with Obi-wan and you are pretty close.
Brand marketers have spared no time in utilizing augmented reality to inspire consumers' imaginations -- here's a look at some of the best early work:
Lego and K'Nnex: The toy company, with its "digital box," has one of the more arresting uses of augmented reality today. Simply hold up the Lego box to an in-store kiosk with a web cam and watch a rendering of the toy assemble itself. Metaio, one of the leaders in AR, designed the experience for Lego. Total Immersion, another leader in AR, created a similar experience for K'nex toys which also allows you to control and even pilot the AR rendering of the toy.
Topps: Topps is leading the way with augmented reality today and trying to ignite new consumer interest in sports trading cards for the digital era. The company enlisted Total Immersion to create a full AR experience that brings Major League Baseball favorites like Ryan Howard to life. At Toppstown fans get the full 3-D experience, can make the tiny players bat and pitch, plus explore stats and game info.
"Coraline": The marketing for "Coraline," the first stop-motion animation feature shot in stereoscopic 3-D, was top notch. One of the highlights was the creation of a digital out-of-home campaign that literally placed consumers in the story by allowing them to see themselves as a part of the film through augmented reality. These "Storescapes" used AR to superimpose images onto pedestrians, so onlookers could see their reflections in a screen with animations including button eyes covering their real eyes.
Toyota IQ and Mini: Car companies such as Toyota and BMW have been quick to use augmented reality technology to create a 3-D interactive experience for new cars. Toyota employed the technology to show off its new small car, Toyota IQ, which allows consumers to interact with the car and discover its agility and interior space. MINI employed the same strategy for the release of its Cabrio convertible.
Fanta Virtual Tennis: Fanta uses augmented reality to bring a bit of whimsy and play to its Play On Virtual Tennis offering. The game enables consumers to play in either single or double mode, facing off with a friend any conceivable location. It's promises the closest thing to an out of home Wii experience that we've seen yet.
As novel and fun as these examples are (and there are many, many more -- even GE is in on it), we are still years away from realizing the true potential of augmented reality. The next wave, which is just starting to emerge from the labs, promises a full melding of virtual and physical without markers. Imagine walking down the street and seeing digital overlays on physical locations (bars, restaurants, movies) with adverts, video clips and even avatars.
The primary way to experience this today (albeit with bugs) is with a mobile device, such as T-Mobile's G1, which runs Google's Android software. For example, Wikitude from Mobilizy is a mobile travel guide that provides overlays of locale information for more than 350,000 world-wide points of interest. Similarly, Enkin wants to "reinvent navigation, by combining GPS, orientation sensors, 3-D graphics, live video, and several web services into something wholly new. More practically, SPRXmobile and ING deliver a mobile ATM finder for the Netherlands that allows you to locate ING ATMs simply by holding the phone in front of you.
At this moment, augmented reality for marketers is a novel, nifty new technology -- but one that will probably grow gimmicky quickly. I've personally played with seven or eight demos at this point (many mentioned above) and after the "gee whiz" factor is exhausted, there's not really much there to sustain any real engagement. Besides, there's a vague whiff of "Dungeons & Dragons" around this stuff that's will be hard for most to get over.
Today, the biggest potential is for both geeks and gamers. It's not hard to imagine how a video-game company could use the technology to literally place consumers into the game. Or how companies like Topps and Legos will further use augmented reality to enable a more enhanced game play experience. Check out WiiSpray for a taste.
Augmented reality has huge promise, but in the short term it's a niche technology for a niche audience. But, of course, gaining a foothold in the multibillion-dollar gaming industry is not a bad place from which to start. Let's just hope our desire to hype it AR as the next big thing won't harm it.
~ ~ ~ Garrick Schmitt is Group Vice President of Experience Planning at Razorfish and the agency's global lead for User Experience. He publishes FEED, Razorfish's annual consumer experience report, and writes and edits the Razorfish Digital Design Blog. In his spare time he flails about on Twitter @gschmitt.
Monday, March 23, 2009
Some outtakes from the recent SXSW conference. Nothing too earth shattering, but good too se what's being discussed
March 19th, 2009 by Heather Brunner | Senior Vice President of Worldwide Client Services
This post was guest-written by Melissa Lipscomb, Bazaarvoice Community Manager
Spring break in Austin means SXSW, an exciting celebration of music, film and web creativity. I spent the last few days at SXSW Interactive – the portion of the conference that’s dedicated to social media and web 2.0. Here are my top 10 takeaways:
People expect conversations online. Regardless of the industry/type of site, end users expect to engage with brands and with other users on-line. It’s not enough to provide information to your customers, you have to allow them to interact with your site, with your brand, and with other customers. Of course, tools like Ratings & Reviews, Ask & Answer, and Bazaarvoice Stories build customer engagement and interaction.
Customers expect brands to participate in the conversation. There was lots of discussion at SXSWi about the importance of building relationships with customers, rather than simply focusing on transactions. Responding to feedback (both positive and negative), answering questions and taking action on feedback are an important part of building credibility and trust with your customers.
Customers want authenticity. Several panelists emphasized the value of brand representatives talking “like real people” not robots (or corporatebots), even (or maybe especially) in industries where we’ve come to expect corporate jargon and legalese (like financial services and insurance).
Online identities are converging.OpenID and Facebook Connect are enabling greater portability/sharing of online abilities between sites. Profiles are important – people are invested in their identities online and want to build their reputations and leverage what they’ve done in one community in the other places they hang out. The most social media savvy customers are aware of their personal brands and welcome opportunities to build their brands on the sites where they shop.
Mobile and web are converging. Many people access the web primarily from their phones, others switch back and forth with the expectation the user experiences will be identical.
Online and offline are converging. GPS technology brings the real world into the mix in a big way (for example, your phone alerting a social networking site of your physical location, which allows your online friends to join you in the real world). Users are less likely to draw a hard boundary between their on-line and off-line lives. MobileVoice brings online UGC into the brick and mortar store, allowing customers to view reviews on their phones.
Filtering and aggregating the massive amounts of data online is critical. There are too many inputs and the most valuable technologies on the web are those that allow people to personalize what they see or provide rolled-up summaries. Filtering by tag or attribute and summarizing data in tag clouds or histograms allows customers to process large amounts of information and make a decision quickly.
Twitter is everywhere. Some of the most compelling and interesting conversations were happening “back channel” via twitter during the panels. Panelists took questions and responded in real time to comments that were made on the twitter stream for each panel. Fast and pithy user-generated contentin real time is incredibly appealing to many people.
Bazaarvoice is ahead of the pack. Admittedly, SXSW Interactive is a social media conference, not one focused specifically on e-commerce, but our ability to measure the success of user-generated content and deliver proven ROI for our clients stands out in an environment where many panelists were unsure about how to monetize UGC or how to measure results.
Bazaarvoice has a great culture!Tony Hsieh (CEO of Zappos) gave a fabulous speech about the culture at Zappos which was very reminiscent of the Bazaarvoice culture. In addition, Bazaarvoice CMO Sam Decker, hosted a core conversation on building a great corporate culture, which got lots of buzz and positive reactions.
This was a great conference; I look forward to seeing what next year brings!
Thanks Cincinnati.com for this report on an social/reality TV mash-up experiment conducted by P&G. Fantastic to see a company like P&G, or any company in fact, stop the theory and speculation and really start putting things to the acid test. My only question is around the use of 'social media experts' in the experiment. Would be really interesting to carry out something similar here in Australia, but use 'normal' people instead. After all any success in the real world is going to have to come from engaging real people and them offering the right value/values that stimulate behaviour, advocacy, loyalty and all the other yummy social payoffs
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Executives from the evolving world of social networks had a meeting of the minds with Procter & Gamble executives Wednesday evening, as the 172-year-old Cincinnati-based giant held a four-hour, reality-show style exercise to help it figure out how it can best use rapidly growing online destinations such as Facebook and MySpace to target consumers.
With a potential audience of more than 300 million people and still growing quickly, social networking sites are seen as the newest frontier in advertising.
About 40 executives from major social networking companies in Silicon Valley and elsewhere were invited to P&G’s downtown headquarters to meet with about a hundred P&G marketers to help them unlock the potential of these online sites to reach consumers.
P&G set up an exercise creating four teams whose goal was to see who could sell the most Tide T-shirts in four hours, starting at 5 p.m., with the money going to charity, using only the Web and a $1,000 budget. With team members hunched over laptops in four conference rooms, they used Twitter, Facebook, Google and YouTube to appeal to potential T-shirt buyers.
The group used their professional and personal Facebook accounts and also their Twitter accounts among many social media tools. To follow the Twitter effort you can link here.. The group also launched www.tide2.com as part of the effort.
Two hours into the exercise, they had sold about 600 T-shirts at $20 a pop.
“We need to become skilled and effective at social communication,” said Lucas Watson, who organized the event as one of P&G’s digital team leaders.
Notably absent from the evening was anyone from Twitter, the explosively growing site where users can update what they are doing, in real time, in short takes.
“They’re growing so fast they haven’t had time to think about the commercial aspects of their company,” Watson said.
But Twitter was one of the main methods the teams used to sell their T-shirts digitally.
Using traditional advertising methods to reach consumers on Facebook and other sites won’t work, Watson said: “You have to be invited in.’’
The potential for advertisers like P&G is enormous. Time spent on social sites is growing more than three times faster than the rate of overall Internet growth, according to a new report from media tracker Nielsen Online.
Just as importantly, the audience is becoming older and more globally diverse, Nielsen found. Social networks started out with a young audience of college age and younger, but has become more mainstream over time.
This shift has been driven by Facebook, whose greatest growth in 2008 – a gain of more than 24 million users – came from people aged 35 to 49, Nielsen found.
“Facebook and social networking is actually becoming more popular then e-mail,” said John Burbank, CEO of Nielsen Online, who participated in the Wednesday night event.
The audience is a marketer’s dream – it’s considered engaged, diverse, global and relatively youthful.
But experts say tapping into this audience is more complicated than advertising in the traditional media of television, radio and print.
Users of Facebook and other social sites are usually online to communicate with each other or for entertainment.
They aren’t accustomed to finding advertising there and aren’t very tolerant of it, says a November report by IDC, a technology research firm.
Of all the Internet users in the U.S., only 3 percent would allow the sites to use their contact information for advertising, IDC’s survey found.
“To understand the social media space, you really have to step into it,” said Pete Blackshaw, an executive vice president with Nielsen Online and a team leader in the Wednesday exercise.
That’s what P&G Digital Night, as it was called, was all about. “Any social media environment is space where consumers are choosing to spend their time,” Watson said. “We need to learn how to connect with them there.”
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